EAGAN, Minn. – Wes Phillips started with a stroll, then a slow jog, then went full swan dive.

The Vikings offensive coordinator fully committed, outstretching his arms as he went airborne and then landing – somewhere between gracefully and belly flop – onto the stacked tackling pads.

Phillips laughed as he rolled off the blue pads and into a standing position.

"I have to say, I didn't have that on my Bingo card this week," Vikings Communications Manager Carly Bonk said, handing him a bottled water already sweating beads of condensation.

Phillips offered that familiar, subtle smile beneath a blond beard that's started to speckled with gray.

"Let's do this thing," he said, referencing the post-practice interview we'd prearranged.

That's just the thing with Phillips – you never quite know what you might get. From witty quips to meeting-room jokes and post-practice antics, he seems to have mastered the perfect integration of play into work.

Less than a week before this particular interview, Phillips fielded questions from Twin Cities media members at the team's outdoor lectern. He spoke in earnest about Vikings Head Coach Kevin O'Connell's admirable navigation of a challenging offseason, emphasizing utmost respect for O'Connell, then added the following:

"I'm not up for an extension or anything this year."

Phillips paused for the briefest of moments, deadpan, before a grin confirmed the quip and prompted collective chuckles from behind TV cameras and notebooks.

He's always good for a one-liner (or two, three or four) during a press conference, though it often takes a few seconds to verify it's a joke.

Phillips doesn't only integrate his humor into interviews, either.

While prepping for this story, I asked several offensive players to describe their coordinator in one word.

"Dry," said one player. Then another. And then another.

"Jokester" and "goofy" also were given.

One veteran player asked for clarification on the definition of dry humor before settling on his word.

Deadpan, dry humor, or dry-wit humor is the deliberate display of emotional neutrality or no emotion, commonly as a form of comedic delivery to contrast with the ridiculousness or absurdity of the subject matter.

"Yep. That's Wes."

Lineage of laughter

Phillips is entering his third season in Minnesota, but the wittiness dates back much, much further. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree in the Phillips family, and just like Wes' father and grandfather passed a love of football through their bloodline, his sense of humor also is inherited.

Wade Phillips, longtime NFL coach and current XFL head coach at 77, has more than 184,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter), where he's often good for a chuckle mid-scroll.

Classic "dad jokes" are woven throughout @sonofbum's timeline, which also includes football commentary, tips of the cap to fellow coaches and NFL legends, and a photo with a Taylor Swift souvenir cup. A photo from the summer of 2022 shows Wade, then coaching the Houston Roughnecks, standing beside Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, whose entertainment company owns the XFL team. Wade's caption?

"Before and after workout"

Wes Phillips recalled growing up with Wade as a father.

"I hope I'm not quite as corny as he is," Phillips laughed. "But yes, I take after him. It's constant. And I mean, my mom also has a great sense of humor.

"I just remember, even when I was in my teenage years, you know when you're in your awkward years and your parents are embarrassing you? My mom would laugh, and I'm like, 'Don't laugh at that, Mom,' " he continued. "My grandfather Bum had a really good sense of humor. I think that's where Dad got it, and I got part of it."

Phillips paused before adding one additional note:

"I'd like to say I'm a better joke teller than him, but you know, he would probably argue with me about that."

Ask any of Phillips' players, however, and they'll tell you he does excel at delivering a good punchline. They especially look forward to in-season Fridays after a win, because that's when Phillips takes out his packet of jokes.

All 30 pages of them.

"We have our end-of-week run-game meeting, where the whole unit is in the meeting room," he explained, "and if we won the previous week, I'll recap the run game and then they'll get a joke.

"I kind of collect them," Phillips added. "I also know a lot of quick-hitter stuff that I'll tell the guys every now and then, on any day. But the longer, more story-form jokes? They only get those after a win Friday."

Center Garrett Bradbury and his teammates, particularly the rest of the offensive line ("They love jokes."), share an avid appreciation for Phillips' approach.

"He'll throw in this simple, dry remark, and it'll make you go, 'Whoa.' Catches you off-guard," Bradbury said. "But it's so funny."

They also respect and are thankful for Phillips' balance between time for fun and getting down to business.

It's a careful line to toe, but it's never been difficult for Phillips to gauge that perfect ratio from season to season, day to day, group to group. He recognizes it's on-field time that players most love, and classroom time can become monotonous if one isn't careful.

"Meetings aren't always the favorite thing for some players," Phillips said. "So as a presenter, as a teacher, you're trying to find ways – there are times when time is crunched and I've got to cover a lot of information and there isn't much time for extra – but if you feel prepared, you've got a good cut-up, something comes up and I just throw it out there for the guys."

Talking ball & knowing the 'why'

Since joining the Vikings this spring as a free agent, veteran quarterback Sam Darnold has welcomed Phillips' approach in meetings and on the practice field.

Darnold noted he's heard a few Phillips jokes but is "very much looking forward to" the full post-win Friday presentation.

"You've gotta have that balance. In any work environment, not just football, you've gotta be able to relax a little bit. You've gotta be able to have fun and call the people you work with friends – not just colleagues," he said. "That's kind of the mindset that we have here and that I've had other places, as well. But this place is special."

Darnold is a big fan of Phillips' dry humor, but his appreciation for the offensive coordinators goes far beyond his wit.

In fact, when asked for one word to describe the coach, he'd gone with "guru" – because Darnold finds the most fun in simply chatting about their shared love of the game.

"He loves ball. He's been around it his whole life," Darnold said. "What he knows, the football mind he is, it's fun to bounce questions off him. Especially him being in the system for as long as he has … it's really fun to talk ball with Wes and just hear the thoughts and ideas he has for certain plays and how to dress them up or make them make look different. It's very creative and very fun for me to be a part of."

Much of Phillips' coaching philosophy has been shaped by Wade and Bum, who often described the practice as another form of teaching. Knowing the students, connecting with them, helping them learn in the fashion most fit to the individual.

Phillips and O'Connell also believe strongly in explaining the "why" behind asking a player to do something.

After all, Phillips explained, if the player doesn't understand why a play is designed the way it is, everything "is kind of rote memorization," a form of habit rather than true comprehension.

"It becomes just, 'I'm doing this because he told me to do it,' " Phillips said. "But if you can explain to them why, and they have a deeper understanding of either that technique or something within the concept that you're running, then it's only going to make that play better. Understanding concepts is way more important than what I'm doing on this one look – because things change, the picture changes.

"Whether it's a guy blocking, whether I'm running a route and there's people trying to reroute me, whether it's the quarterback thinking, 'I've got this coverage,' and last-second they run the nickel back and now they're running a totally different coverage," he continued. "You know, it's conceptually understanding what's happening, and I can adjust to these things that happen late in the down. I don't have to just – 'Against this front, I do this; against this front, I do this.' There is some of that, sure, but I know how to adjust, because I know the intent of the play. I know where we're trying to hit it, I know where the gap is, I know what my progression is in the read and, 'Oh, they fooled me. I click through and I move to the next guy.' "

It's a coaching technique that also helps various positions organically understand the bigger picture of any given play.

Bradbury noted a recent example when Phillips "popped in" to an offensive line meeting led by Chris Kuper and provided additional context to a particular screen play.

"Sure, I know when I need to get out, where I need to go, but he came in there and told us what the running back or the tight end that's receiving the screen, where he's supposed to catch it, where he's supposed to turn up, between what area on the field we need to be blocking for," Bradbury said. "So, 'OK, now I understand what the running back is thinking. Now I understand when the quarterback's got to get it out.' It gives you a full understanding of, 'OK, then I can do my job this way.' … Hearing that – the 'why,' the big picture – only helps us get better."

Learning from the best

As heavily woven throughout this story, Phillips boasts a cream-of-the-crop football pedigree.

But beyond his father and grandfather, he's taken nuggets of wisdom from many other stops on his coaching journey.

Phillips – the "black sheep" of the family who veered offense rather than defense – named Lee Hays as a prominent influence on his career. The Vikings coordinator calls Hays "the best coach I could have possibly worked for," spending time as Hays' quarterbacks coach at West Texas A&M (2004-05) and then following him to Baylor for a season.

Hays also is an 11-year Marine Corps veteran.

"He taught me how to work. I saw my dad working hours, but you're not there doing it yourself. You don't really [understand] the grind of coaching," Phillips said. "[Hays] had a great sense of humor, but he was hard, you know? He was a hard, hard guy. I loved working for him, but we spent a lot hours – in Division II, you're wearing a lot of hats."

For Phillips, those hats included everything from travel coordinator to assisting with team breakfasts and making sure the bag of footballs was toted to the practice field each day.

He learned the discipline of 7 a.m. meetings from West Texas Head Coach Don Carthel and started to experience for himself the real coaching world. Phillips of course went on to learn from NFL coaches that include Sean McVay, Jason Garrett and O'Connell.

"I think you pick up something every place you go, every person you work for, whether it's coordinators, head coaches or even assistants," he said. "I mean, when I got in the NFL, I thought I knew something about football; but you get to the pro level, and Jason Garrett's our offensive coordinator, I'm like, 'I don't know anything.'

"It's very humbling. In a good way, though," Phillips added. "It made me hungry, like, 'Hey, there's so much out there that I don't know.' And I had so much respect for the coaching profession – still do – and some of these older coaches, I just wanted to prove to them that I was going to work hard, I was going to listen, I was going to learn and, hopefully, do a good job."

Bradbury and his teammates will certainly tell you Phillips does his job well.

"He has such a good understanding of football and the offense that when he says things … you listen," Bradbury said. "He was with tight ends [for the Rams], and he's worked with most every [offensive] position group, I think, at some point. So he's got good nuggets for everyone, on every concept."

For Phillips, it really is all about the players. Seeing the proverbial lightbulb above someone's head light up during a meeting is invaluable. And watching them celebrate a win? Whether preseason, regular season or the Super Bowl, which he experienced in L.A., it's truly why Phillips does what he does.

"In the end, we're doing everything we can to help these guys succeed," he said. "Their success is my success."

And of course, there will always be laughter along the way.

"We're just trying to lighten it up. Not make this thing monotonous," Phillips said. "It should be fun to come play football. It should be fun to watch football, to work out.

"You know, the wear and tear is obviously real; but the love of the game, that's why we're all here," he added. "You've gotta enjoy it."